Dead Salmon "Responds" to Pictures of People

Dead Salmon "Responds" to Pictures of People

www.livescience.com

Dead Salmon supposedly shows brain activity when shown pictures of people during a brain scan.

(visit the link for the full news article)

There's one question that I would like to have a definitive answer to and that is. At point does the brain stop functioning on all levels after death?

This experiment, however questionable it may be does bring up this real question about life. Through out my twenty years of experience in the funeral business I've seen thousands of dead people. Every time I wonder, what if? What if the brain is still active on some level however small? Can they sense me, hear me, see me? Get's a little trippy sometimes, and I wish I could say that I've said a nice prayer for all of them....

One summer I commercial fished for Salmon and I saw thousand of dead Salmon as well. When we would get back to the docks to unload, some of the fish would still be flopping as they were unloaded. Some were limp and ragged others were still in rigor, hard and curled up. They were all iced down in slushy concoction of ice and saltwater, so I guess it just depended on at what point in the trip were they caught. Still death was apparent on a couple different levels in the fish hold that summer. The question still stands, at what point do we and the salmon actually die?

On a personal note; I think that a nice prayer is something I'm going to start doing for every deceased person I come in contact with..

The Undertaker

www.livescience.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

The salmon was asked to determine what emotion the individual in the photo must have been experiencing."

What?!

And this is the real story from your link

In a nutshell, the data reported by Bennett and colleagues in no way suggests the salmon's brain was functioning, but rather reveal anomalies that can be misleading if you're not careful. [In a separate study recently, researchers concluded that human brain scans are often done unnecessarily.]

Also from the article:

Then in 2008, Bennett was working with one of his advisers on a presentation about false positives in MRI data, specifically about misleading results that can come from what's called a "multiple comparisons problem." Bennett ran his 2005 fish data through some statistical programs and, sure enough, three false positives showed up in the salmon's brain.

Great find. Encouraging to see researchers urging thoroughness in scrutinizing the data.

Hmm so what does this guy look like?
Its thinking OMG that looks like the guy who caught me and tried to eat me last summer!Then I got away!Quick runnnnnnnn

Like I said, however questionable the experiment was it still raises a valid question. At what point does the brain stop functioning on all levels?

Originally posted by The Undertaker
Like I said, however questionable the experiment was it still raises a valid question. At what point does the brain stop functioning on all levels?

Well if you want to look at it like that, all energy never dies, it just transfers.
A brain for example, smashed into a million pieces, still lives in the atoms that created it.
They go somewhere, they don't just stop, they change.
A body that is cremated, what do you have, dust and bones?
But they still contain energy, the smoke contained energy.
Nothing ever stops it just moves.

Originally posted by The Undertaker

Dead Salmon "Responds" to Pictures of People

www.livescience.com

Dead Salmon supposedly shows brain activity when shown pictures of people during a brain scan.

(visit the link for the full news article)

I think we really should be asking THIS question .....

What would possess some researcher to say to him/herself .... "let's go get us a DEAD salmon, then hook it up to an encephalograph, and then show it pictures of people".

I mean .... WTF were they thinking ... and WHY were they thinking this !!!!!!!

Maybe it's just the light stimulus they react too. Although a picture of me and my fly rod make fish quiver, they fear me.

The salmon weren't dead. Fish are tough.
I bought (Finnyagain) the goldfish five weeks ago during a heatwave and he jumped out of the quarantine tank and spent at least four hours out of the water and was so dried up he had sand stuck to him and his dorsal fin broke when I peeled him off the ground. I put him back in the tank to rehydrate him and then in a couple of hours was going to take him back to the pet store (14 day health guarntee - they weren't specific.) but the dead fish swam away from away from the net I was trying to fish him out with.
Five weeks later he is still alive and looking much better.
I wonder if he would have died if I had not named him Finnyagain - Spoof of Finnigan's wake - not so much of a joke now.

This is an interesting question that I believe has been raise once at least once before in ATS. I believe that our consciousness is only a bunch of electrical activity in the brain, which I think is the accepted view in science. Now what if when our bodies are "dead", or brains- and our consciousness- is still pretty much active and aware?

when death occurs our cells begin to die out, which is why decomposition happens, but the question is at what point does our consciousness ceases to function. Are we still thinking two hours after death? even though we can't speak, move our eyes, or move our bodies? Can we still feel some degree of pain even if our body won't respond to outside stimulus?

It really is a scary thought, because this would mean "death" might actually be even more of an excruciating experience than previously thought if we are still aware of our own decomposition for hours.

reply to post by tauristercus


Finally someone says what I'm thinking!

Really. At what point does someone say "Hey! Lets go get a dead salmon and then show it people!"

You know what I think happened?

I think some researchers were hungry and had to think up some excuse to buy salmon and write it off as a business expense.

reply to post by The Undertaker


Apples and oranges come to mind as well. After all, drowned flies can be ressurrected with salt. Doesn't mean you can do that with drowned humans.

Something's Fishy

Ironically, this thread seems to embody its own study of how many ATSers actually read an article before commenting on it.

There are several questions asked which are readily answered in the article -- which also does not in any way shape or form assert that a dead salmon was actually responding to photographs of people in different social situations.

In fact, the nature of so many of the responses to the study both here and elsewhere actually reinforces its true point: how easy it is to misinterpret data and reach misleading conclusions.

Food for thought for those of us more fortunate than the dead salmon.

Originally posted by The Undertaker
Like I said, however questionable the experiment was it still raises a valid question. At what point does the brain stop functioning on all levels?

that's a great question. I don't know if I have the exact answer but I'll say some things I know. People who have drowned in freezing cold water have been revived a long time later, with minimal brain damage.

But I believe if the body is at normal temperature, brain damage can start setting in as early as 3 or 4 minutes after the heart stops beating so even if the heart is restarted the brain won't return to full function.

How are these observations relevant? Well it appears there is a relationship between temperature, and metabolic activity in the brain. So just making the brain really cool (but still above freezing) can shut it down into a nearly non-living state, but it can still be revived. doctors know this as this story shows:

NYC Man Survives After Heart Stops For 45 Minutes

At normal body temperature, the brain cells start dying off after a few minutes due to a lack of oxygen (if there's no heartbeat) but all the remaining living brain cells should be able to keep firing. As more and more brain cells die due to lack of oxygen, they can no longer fire the electric charges that make up brain activity. After 10 minutes brain damage could be quite severe at normal body temperature.

By definition, "brain death" is "when the entire brain, including the brain stem, has irreversibly lost all function." The legal time of death is "that time when a physician(s) has determined that the brain and the brain stem have irreversibly lost all neurological function."

But rather than come up with an exact number of minutes at which the brain stops functioning on all levels, I think we have to say that is a function of temperature:

www.fightaging.org...

Cold-water-drowning cases who have been revived after an hour or more without vital signs are relevant to cryonics in several ways.

1. They are living proof that postmortem brain damage can be delayed by hypothermia, especially if cooling occurs initially while the heart is still beating. This is an important factor because blood circulation can withdraw heat from the body and brain far more rapidly than surface cooling after the circulation stops. This should be reassuring to any member of a cryonics organization that cools the patient promptly after legal death has been pronounced, provided an ice bath is supplemented with cardiopulmonary support to sustain some circulation of the blood.

2. They demonstrate that cellular processes in the brain can restart spontaneously after a period of total dormancy. Consciousness returns and memories are preserved. By extension, cryopatients may be similarly revived after decades rather than hours of stasis. This is a major credibility issue for many people.

3. Resuscitation of patients after more than an hour without vital signs is a direct challenge to anyone who believes that the soul leaves the body after "death" occurs. Since revived patients do not behave like zombies, we have to assume that the soul, if it exists, is still present. Therefore, either the soul doesn't leave, or there is no soul, or the person wasn't really dead. If the drowning victim wasn't really dead, then cryopatients aren't really dead either (so long as they have been properly cryopreserved).

[edit on 30-9-2009 by Arbitrageur]